Having Fun on Instagram
It's actually possible!
As I count down to my book publish date, September 8, 2026, I am following conventional wisdom to have a presence on social media to attract readers. Social media for me is Substack and Instagram.
Instead of only book content, which starts to bore even me, I decided to have a few other themes, that still show my personality as a writer, what I think about, how I work, or mostly, how I see the world.
It’s been surprisingly fun!
Make a few templates on Canva. Check.
Get a few good ideas. Check.
Good to go. So . . . go!
If you don’t follow me on Instagram, I invite you to because you never know what is gonna happen. It’s quiet there, no screaming, but there is sarcasm, sunsets, and pithy conversation.
I only have 428 followers so it’s not like I’m setting the book world on fire there, but the two series I’ve settled on (besides the book stuff—you can expect that) are:
5 Seconds of Sunset and Conversations With My Son.
I chose the 5 Seconds of Sunset because it’s easy—a 5 second film of the beauty that greets us every evening. I didn’t choose sunrise because, well, that happens early.
Conversations With My Son is just that. Mostly from text messages. He’s funnier than I am. It’s also a great depiction of how I view and react to the world.
I’m pretty happy with the Mimi and Maurice content too, giving some insight into their world, and showing some of the relics in their story. There’s even a few stories that didn’t make it into the book. Keeping it interesting, hopefully.
Today was supposed to be a post I have ready to go about writers and AI, but there is currently a big brou-ha-ha regarding AI on Substack, so I’ve delayed it for when no one is paying any attention to AI. Maybe to be released in 2040.
I’m not one to be intentionally controversial, but this kerfuffle about AI on Substack has to do with the fact that Substack enabled an AI detector by default on all posts. I have to turn it off if I don’t want readers running an AI scan on my work.
I’ll tell you if I use AI. In the post I mentioned that I haven’t published yet, I go in to depth about it. But those detectors are crap and I’m turning them off for my posts.
Not because I’m hiding anything. Not because I don’t want my readers to know whether I use AI or not, I will tell you—no AI used in this post.
But if the detector says my work is AI, my writer reputation can be irreparably damaged. If the detectors were good, I’d say sure. They aren’t. So if you want to scan my work, you will come up against a notice that it’s not available.
Just going for disclosure.
Instagram has a lot of AI use by me. I use Canva, I ask my AI to help with hashtags and captions because I’m not a marketing genius. I personally have no problem telling readers how and when I use it.
But I’ll be damned if a type of program that declared Frankenstein was 100% AI will be allowed to touch my work, at least until it spends some time in its room and thinks about its choices.
Peace,
Jo